Moral Letters to Lucilius

​Next, if reason makes progress, passions will not even begin; if they begin against the will of reason, they will persist against its will. For it is easier to prevent their beginnings than to rule their force. Therefore, that moderation of yours is false and useless, to be held in the same place as if someone should say that one ought to be moderately insane, moderately sick.

​Virtue alone possesses (self-control), the evils of the soul do not admit moderation. You will remove them more easily than you will rule them. Is there any doubt that the long-standing and hard vices of the human mind, which we call diseases, are immoderate, such as avarice, cruelty, and lack of self-control? Therefore, passions are also immoderate.

​For from these there is a transition to those. Next, if you grant any right to sadness, fear, desire, and other perverse movements, they will not be in our power. Why? Because the things by which they are irritated are outside us. Therefore they will grow, according as they have great or smaller causes by which they are excited. Fear will be greater if it looks at more things by which it may be terrified, or looks at them more closely; desire will be sharper, in proportion as the hope of a grander thing has evoked it.

​If it is not in our power whether passions exist, neither is it in our power how great they are; if you have permitted them to begin, they will grow with their causes and will be as great as they become. Add now that these things, however small they are, exceed into something greater. Harmful things never keep a limit. However light the beginnings of diseases are, they creep in, and sometimes the smallest increase sinks the sick bodies.

​Indeed, of what madness is it to believe that, of those things whose principles are placed outside our judgment, the boundaries are of our judgment? How am I sufficiently strong for fearing that, for preventing which I was too little strong, since it is easier to exclude than to suppress what has been admitted?

​Certain people have distinguished in this way, so as to say: “The temperate and prudent man is indeed tranquil in the positioning of his mind and in his habit, but he is not so in the outcome. For, as far as the habit of his mind is concerned, he is not perturbed, nor does he grieve, nor does he fear, but many causes fall upon him from without, which bring perturbation to him.”

​This is what they wish to say: that he is indeed not angry, yet he is angry sometimes; and he is indeed not timid, yet he fears sometimes; that is, he lacks the vice of fear, but does not lack the passion. But if this is accepted, by frequent use fear will pass into a vice, and anger admitted into the mind will unravel that habit of the mind that produces anger.

​Moreover, if he does not despise causes coming from without and fears something, when he must go bravely against weapons, fires, for his country, laws, and liberty, he will go forth hesitantly and with a receding mind.

​But this diversity of mind does not fall upon a wise man. Moreover, I judge that this must be observed, lest we mix two things which are to be proved separately. For by itself it is gathered that the only good is what is honorable, and by itself again, that virtue is sufficient for a happy life. If the only good is what is honorable, all concede that virtue suffices for living happily; conversely, it will not be denied, if virtue alone makes one happy, that the only good is what is honorable.

​Xenocrates and Speusippus think that one can become happy even by virtue alone, yet not that the only good is what is honorable. Epicurus also judges that he who has virtue is happy, but that virtue itself is not sufficient for a happy life, because pleasure, which is from virtue, makes one happy, not virtue itself. An absurd distinction. For the same man denies that virtue is ever without pleasure; so if it is always joined to it and inseparable, even alone it is sufficient. For it has with itself pleasure, without which it is not, even when it is alone.